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USSC Decides Important Voting Rights Act Case

By Calvin Massey

    The Supreme Court today issued its decision in Bartlett v. Strickland, holding that section 2 of the Voting Rights Act does not require racial gerrymandering when the proportion of minority voters in a district is less than 50% of the total.  The lead opinion is a plurality opinion in which Kennedy, Roberts, and Alito joined.  Justices Thomas and Scalia concurred in the judgment on the grounds that no vote dilution claim can be founded on section 2.  Justices Souter, Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer dissented.  The plurality opinion, authored by Kennedy, noted that a contrary reading of section 2 would raise significant questions of whether such required racial gerrymandering would violate the Equal Protection guarantee.  This is a sensible reading of the statute, because a construction of section 2 that would require racial gerrymandering to achieve enhanced prospects of election of a racial minority whenever a district contains more than a de minimus proportion of racial minorities would lead to endless litigation, and the Thornburg v. Gingles standard that would apply to those claims is so amorphous that litigation would never end. 

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on March 09, 2009 (boomark / email).